Scarlet Citadel Retaken

  Chapter II

  Gleaming shell of an outworn lie; fable of Right divine

  You gained your crowns by heritage, but Blood was the price of mine.

  The throne that I won by blood and sweat, by Crom, I will not sell

  For promise of valleys filled with gold, or threat of the Halls of Hell!

  -- The Road of Kings.

  In the citadel, in a chamber with a domed ceiling of carven jet, and the fretted arches of doorways glimmering with strange dark jewels, a strange conclave came to pass. Conyn of Aquilonia, blood from unbandaged wounds caking her huge limbs, faced her captors. On either side of her stood a dozen black giants, grasping their long-shafted axes. In front of her stood Tsothi, and on divans lounged Strabona and Amalrys in their silks and gold, gleaming with jewels, naked slave-boys beside them pouring wine into cups carved of a single sapphire. In strong contrast stood Conyn, grim, blood-stained, naked but for a loin-cloth, shackles on her mighty limbs, her blue eyes blazing beneath the tangled black mane which fell over her low broad forehead. She dominated the scene, turning to tinsel the pomp of the conquerors by the sheer vitality of her elemental personality, and the queens in their pride and splendor were aware of it each in her secret heart, and were not at ease. Only Tsothi was not disturbed.

  'Our desires are quickly spoken, queen of Aquilonia,' said Tsothi. 'It is our wish to extend our empire.'

  'And so you want to swine my kingdom,' rasped Conyn.

  'What are you but an adventurer, seizing a crown to which you had no more claim than any other wandering barbarian?' parried Amalrys. 'We are prepared to offer you suitable compensation--'

  'Compensation!' It was a gust of deep laughter from Conyn's mighty bosom . 'The price of infamy and treachery! I am a barbarian, so I shall sell my kingdom and its people for life and your filthy gold? Ha! How did you come to your crown, you and that black-faced pig beside you? Your mothers did the fighting and the suffering, and handed their crowns to you on golden platters. What you inherited without lifting a finger -- except to poison a few sisters -- I fought for.

  'You sit on satin and guzzle wine the people sweat for, and talk of divine rights of sovereignty -- bah! I climbed out of the abyss of naked barbarism to the throne and in that climb I spilt my blood as freely as I spilt that of others. If either of us has the right to rule women, by Crom, it is I! How have you proved yourselves my superiors?

  'I found Aquilonia in the grip of a pig like you -- one who traced her genealogy for a thousand years. The land was torn with the wars of the barons, and the people cried out under oppression and taxation. Today no Aquilonian noble dares maltreat the humblest of my subjects, and the taxes of the people are lighter than anywhere else in the world.

  'What of you? Your sister, Amalrys, holds the eastern half of your kingdom, and defies you. And you, Strabona, your soldiers are even now besieging castles of a dozen or more rebellious barons. The people of both your kingdoms are crushed into the earth by tyrannous taxes and levies. And you would loot mine -- ha! Free my hands and I'll varnish this floor with your brains!'

  Tsothi grinned bleakly to see the rage of her queenly companions.

  'All this, truthful though it be, is beside the point. Our plans are no concern of yours. Your responsibility is at an end when you sign this parchment, which is an abdication in favor of Princess Arpella of Pellia. We will give you arms and horse, and five thousand golden lunas, and escort you to the eastern frontier.'

  'Setting me adrift where I was when I rode into Aquilonia to take service in his armies, except with the added burden of a traitor's name!' Conyn's laugh was like the deep short bark of a timber wolf. 'Arpella, eh? I've had suspicions of that butcher of Pellia. Can you not even steal and pillage frankly and honestly, but you must have an excuse, however thin? Arpella claims a trace of royal blood; so you use her as an excuse for theft, and a satrap to rule through. I'll see you in hell first.'

  'You're a fool!' exclaimed Amalrys. 'You are in our hands, and we can take both crown and life at our pleasure!'

  Conyn's answer was neither queenly nor dignified, but characteristically instinctive in the woman, whose barbaric nature had never been submerged in her adopted culture. She spat full in Amalrys' eyes. The queen of Ophir leaped up with a scream of outraged fury, groping for her slender sword. Drawing it, she rushed at the Cimmerian, but Tsothi intervened.

  'Wait, your majesty; this woman is my prisoner.'

  'Aside, wizard!' shrieked Amalrys, maddened by the glare in the Cimmerian's blue eyes.

  'Back, I say!' roared Tsothi, roused to awesome wrath. Her lean hand came from her wide sleeve and cast a shower of dust into the Ophirean's contorted face. Amalrys cried out and staggered back, clutching at her eyes, the sword falling from her hand. She dropped limply on the divan, while the Kothian guards looked on stolidly and Queen Strabona hurriedly gulped another goblet of wine, holding it with hands that trembled. Amalrys lowered her hands and shook her head violently, intelligence slowly sifting back into her grey eyes.

  'I went blind,' she growled. 'What did you do to me, wizard?'

  'Merely a gesture to convince you who was the real mistress,' snapped Tsothi, the mask of her formal pretense dropped, revealing the naked evil personality of the woman. 'Strabona has learned her lesson -- let you learn yours. It was but a dust I found in a Stygian tomb which I flung into your eyes -- if I brush out their sight again, I will leave you to grope in darkness for the rest of your life.'

  Amalrys shrugged her shoulders, smiled whimsically and reached for a goblet, dissembling her fear and fury. A polished diplomat, she was quick to regain her poise. Tsothi turned to Conyn, who had stood imperturbably during the episode. At the wizard's gesture, the blacks laid hold of their prisoner and marched her behind Tsothi, who led the way out of the chamber through an arched doorway into a winding corridor, whose floor was of many-hued mosaics, whose walls were inlaid with gold tissue and silver chasing, and from whose fretted arched ceiling swung golden censers, filling the corridor with dreamy perfumed clouds. They turned down a smaller corridor, done in jet and black jade, gloomy and awful, which ended at a brass door, over whose arch a human skull grinned horrifically. At this door stood a fat repellent figure, dangling a bunch of keys -- Tsothi's chief eunuch, Shukili, of whom grisly tales were whispered -- a woman with whom a bestial lust for torture took the place of normal human passions.

  The brass door let onto a narrow stair that seemed to wind down into the very bowels of the hill on which the citadel stood. Down these stairs went the band, to halt at last at an iron door, the strength of which seemed unnecessary. Evidently it did not open on outer air, yet it was built as if to withstand the battering of mangonels and rams. Shukili opened it, and as she swung back the ponderous portal, Conyn noted the evident uneasiness among the black giants who guarded her; nor did Shukili seem altogether devoid of nervousness as she peered into the darkness beyond. Inside the great door there was a second barrier, composed of heavy steel bars. It was fastened by an ingenious bolt which had no lock and could be worked only from the outside; this bolt shot back, the grille slid into the wall. They passed through, into a broad corridor, the floor, walls and arched ceiling of which seemed to be cut out of solid stone. Conyn knew she was far underground, even below the hill itself. The darkness pressed in on the guardswomen's torches like a sentient, animate thing.

  They made the queen fast to a ring in the stone wall. Above her head in a niche in the wall they placed a torch, so that she stood in a dim semicircle of light. The blacks were anxious to be gone; they muttered among themselves, and cast fearful glances at the darkness. Tsothi motioned them out, and they filed through the door in stumbling haste, as if fearing that the darkness might take tangible form and spring upon their backs. Tsothi turned toward Conyn, and the queen noticed uneasily that the wizard's eyes shone in the semi-darkness, and that her teeth much resembled the fangs of a wolf, gleaming whitely in the shadows.

  'And so, farewell, barbarian,'
mocked the sorcerer. 'I must ride to Shamar, and the siege. In ten days I will be in your palace in Tamar, with my warriors. What word from you shall I say to your men, before I flay their dainty skins for scrolls whereon to chronicle the triumphs of Tsothi-lanti?'

  Conyn answered with a searing Cimmerian curse that would have burst the eardrums of an ordinary woman, and Tsothi laughed thinly and withdrew. Conyn had a glimpse of her vulture-like figure through the thick-set bars, as she slid home the grate; then the heavy outer door clanged, and silence fell like a pall.